Barcelona Fotos 1

I hope I can eke this post out before we have to go! Already I am sure the streets are flooded with La Roja. Carlos has had the tv on for most of the day and it has been non-stop futbol. Super exciting! Paul the octopus is predicting a win for Spain today so now I have absolutely no doubt in my mind! http://futbol.univision.com/world-cup-2010-south-africa/news/article/2010-07-09/viva-spain-says-paul-the

Here are some more pictures from Barcelona! The actual blow by blow of the account of our travels as well as the BEST pictures will probably come tomorrow, as will my collection of futbol stuff (including video)! It may not be the best idea, but I'm totally bringing a camera to the game tonight. I want to have footage of when Spain wins the World Cup, plus the ensuing madness.

Anyway, Barcelona...

Lexi and I ignored the advice given to us by several people about pickpockets and ventured into the Rambles district of the city. We found a bizaar type market and wandered for a long while amongst its many stands and interesting grocery-type setting. You could literally get anything there! Including some cute pigs:

And a whole lot of things that I didn't even recognize.

It's best if they still have the eyeballs, I always say.

Hey, it's her fault for standing between my camera and that restaurant. Any rational person would have seized the opportunity as I did.

We also found a museum! We think it was a museum. It turns out EVERYTHING in Barcelona is in Catalan, so we actually didn't use Spanish much at all because if you didn't know Catalan the speaker would immediately switch to English. So we think it was a museum but when we went inside this is what we found...we left with a great deal of confusion.

We just kept strolling down the street and found the Catalan library! From what I gathered from the non-spanish signs (Catalan is similar enough that you can usually figure out what you need, sort of like Portuguese but WAY easier), this place was built in siglo XIII as some sort of a hospital. Then it fell into the church's hands and they made it a convent? I couldn't quite tell. And from there it became a theatre / art type place, and now it is a library! So there you go.

The library had interesting fruit in some of the trees, and I found a sign that supposedly explained it to me. Wikipedia later informed me that they were Loquats! I am not sure I've ever heard of that fruit before, actually.

We walked back to the open market and found a restaurant that advertised churros con xocolate (stupid Catalan). Sooooooooo what were we supposed to do?